View SlideshowRequest to buy this photoJohn Shearer | InvisionArmie Hammer, in front of a poster of himself in character, at the June 22 world premiere of
The Lone Ranger at Disney California Adventure in Anaheim

Who was that masked man?

Back in the 1990s, he wasn’t Armie Hammer.

“I could not base this on my childhood in the backyard,” said the actor, who plays the title
role in the
The Lone Ranger.

“I did play ‘Lone Ranger,’ but I was Tonto.”

At age 26, Hammer — in his first leading film role — gets his shot at wearing the mask and
firing the silver bullets.

Johnny Depp, a three-time Oscar nominee, rides by his side as Tonto.

Hammer plays John Reid, a Texas Ranger who, after his brother is slain by a band of outlaws,
dons a mask to pursue the killers — helped by Tonto, an American Indian.

He views the film as a story of determination.

“The most important thing for my character is his inflated sense of justice,” Hammer said. “My
mission is to bring law and order. That’s what the original was about, and that’s what our film is
about at the core.

“It’s also a buddy movie: It’s about a man who finds a good buddy to help him and hang out with
him.”

Hammer felt fortunate to land a sidekick of Depp’s stature.

“He’s a great actor and a really generous one,” Hammer said. “If you are going to do a buddy
movie, you want Johnny Depp as your buddy.”

In some ways, he noted, filming presented greater challenges for Depp than for him.

“Johnny spent an hour and a half in the makeup chair each day. There were times he even slept in
the makeup. You really couldn’t go with him out to eat the next day — the makeup smelled that
bad."

The film has the daunting task of reintroducing the Lone Ranger, an iconic hero of 1930s radio
and film — and, later, a beloved 1950s TV staple — to a generation more familiar with video games
and the Internet than with radio dramas and Western movies.

“We’re giving them something new,” Hammer said. “It’s also different because we fleshed out the
character and gave him more to do in the movie. There’s more for him to feel and more to struggle
with as we get to know both the Lone Ranger and Tonto better.”

The Lone Ranger, who loaded his guns with silver bullets and rode a mighty stallion named
Silver, made his debut on radio in 1933, initially voiced by George Seaton.

The character became an immediate hit, spawning a series of books, comic books and movie
serials.

The show — also called
The Lone Ranger — expanded to television, with Clayton Moore (the title character) and Jay
Silverheels (Tonto) from 1949 to ’57. The final episode on radio aired in 1954.

Since then, there have been occasional efforts to revive the character — most notably the film
The Legend of the Lone Ranger (1981) and
The Lone Ranger (2003), a WB pilot for a proposed series starring Chad Michael Murray.
None caught on, though.

The radio program and the TV series provide the inspiration for the new film — and cast a long
shadow that, Hammer said, initially intimidated him.

“I finally decided that people could keep their nostalgic attachment to the character while we
introduced it to a new generation,” he said. “I just didn’t want to mess it up for them.”

The 6-foot-5-inch actor had more-concrete issues to deal with during filming — a grueling shoot
in multiple Western states that spanned almost eight months and forced him to brave everything from
broiling temperatures to blinding snowstorms.

The trickiest parts, however, involved the key character known to radio audiences as “the great
horse Silver.”

“I needed a tall horse,” the actor said. “It’s not even a joke.

“I couldn’t lock my feet under the horse to hide them, and it couldn’t look like this tall guy
was on a pony.”